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Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#221

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

bsder wrote: post #83

And we have research now that hypothesizes that Omicron incubated in mice and then jumped back to humans. If that hypothesis is true, then we have a fine example of something running in the background in a reservoir and then Hey, Presto! suddenly appearing to be mutated specifically for humans. If that's true, then all manner of "weird" things suddenly become both plausible and probable without any human intervention…

> If that hypothesis is true, then we have a fine example of something running in the background in a reservoir and then Hey, Presto! suddenly appearing to be mutated specifically for humans.

Isn't this the case with all zoonotic viruses? The reservoir is all the other species? HIV was also found in monkeys. We are all affected by the reservoir because we are also part of the reservoir.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#222

Post by coolhand2120 »

senectus1 wrote: post #84
RikNieu wrote: post #58

> “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. You know what else causes unnecessary harm to science, public trust and health policy? Repeated and condescending lies and gas-lighting from those in charge.

so also does the firehose of conspiracy theory's, misinformation and lunatic fringe that appears to be the overtly noisy minority on all forms of media these days.

The problem is that the lab leak was dismissed as a conspiracy theory as are many of the things that have now come to pass, e.g.: ineffective vaccines, side effects.

Pair that with the disinformation coming from once trusted institutions, e.g.: 5 vs 10 day quarantine, sending health care workers to work while still positive.

It's no wonder people are giving more credence to these fringe groups. The government has nobody to blame but itself for such poor messaging.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#224

Post by DevKoala »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #180
DevKoala wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it is non-actionable? If it was a lab leak we can determine what conditions lead to the leak and adopt better safety measures. The lab leak was most likely a protocol error and without a collective awareness of the cause, the population cannot push our elected leaders to demand better safety protocols.

Who is "we"? And if it's a weapons lab, what makes you think China is going to allow geopolitical adversaries to poke around to make a more secure and safer environment? This idea works with countries that can't defend themselves against the West such as Iraq, but it's always backed by an invasion. No such option exists in the case of China, so their sovereignty will remain unsullied.

The people of the USA. Apparently, the lab in Wuhan was performing gain of function research with funding from NIH. Now what is up for debate is if that specific research was what led to Covid-19.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#225

Post by hoseja »

sol_invictus wrote: post #88
dane-pgp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> warned it could damage “international harmony”. I've never understood the argument that people would want to suppress the (accidental) lab-leak hypothesis out of a desire to protect the image of China. If the lab-leak hypothesis is incorrect, that doesn't change the fact that the virus originated in that country, it just means that the virus emerged from a wet market. I'm not Chinese, but I'd imagine that a country…

Quoted post unavailable.

Hints at where the support for that ideology originates from.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#227

Post by throwawaysea »

swader999 wrote: post #217
throwawaysea wrote: post #188

I’m curious if anyone has investigated the recent leaks from Project Veritas ( https://www.projectveritas.com/news/military-documents-about... ). It suggests once again, that the NIH/NIAID grant to EcoHealth Alliance was in support of gain of function research at WIV involving SARS-like viruses. As a reminder, EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Peter Daszak, is a listed author on various WIV papers that explicitly descr…

If true, this would be insane. Covering up the leak, hiding early treatments, killing millions of us. And I'm not implicating CCP in this, those docs point to USA origination. At the moment I feel like it all just fits too easily. So skeptical about whether or not it's a convenient plant.

Some of the previously identified papers listing Peter Daszak as an author were already damning, as they explicitly describe creating infectious clones of SARS-like (SL) viruses that can spread easily (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4936131/). The related grants are all still searchable and listed on the official government websites:

> Recently, another bat SL-CoV strain, SHC014, has been demonstrated to use human ACE2 by the construction of an infectious cDNA clone (12). Furthermore, animal infection experiments indicated that SL-CoV WIV1 and SHC014 could replicate efficiently and caused low pathogenesis in ACE2 transgenic mice (12, 13). The fact that the native bat SL-CoVs could use human ACE2 without any mutations indicates a high risk of interspecies transmission for these and similar coronaviruses that may exist in natural reservoirs.

I am not sure how Fauci has managed to avoid accountability so far - I guess his aggressive behavior at Senate hearings has worked. But this new leak suggests that another government agency (DARPA) also accused the NIH/NIAID of conducting gain of function research in violation of the law and in violation of basic ethics, all using taxpayer money. If true and not a plant, it might just be enough to break through the lack of attention around this.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#228

Post by scott_w »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #160
perihelions wrote: post #6

> "Professor Andrew Rambaut, from the University of Edinburgh, also said that furin cleavage site “strikes me as unusual”." > "He added: “I think the only people with sufficient information or access to samples to address it would be the teams working in Wuhan.”" This pair of quotes has a completely different meaning from the original quote it sliced up: > "I am also agnostic on this – I do not have any experience of…

dishonesty in the Telegraph in this case might be caused by scientific illiteracy, that is to say they might honestly have thought that their selective quotations were a reflecting the message of the longer quote. Or maybe I'm being too lenient in attributing to incompetence and not malice here.

In other papers, perhaps, but the Telegraph famously hired (now PM) Boris Johnson who cut his teeth making up stories about the “evils” of the EU. I’m going to struggle to trust such an outlet.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#229

Post by awb »

mads wrote: post #181
carlivar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when journalists tried to access those caves, the road was suddenly closed.

Indeed... And in creative manners. Here is the report from the visit: https://twitter.com/thejohnsudworth/status/13972233747457065... Someone really really didn't want anyone near those mines.

Apparently he ran afoul of the Chinese government in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/bbc-crew-attac...

Fair to also entertain the possibility that they were tracking him because of his previous reporting on land reform in remote villages, when he travelled into remote areas again 4 years later. He had to sign a forced confession the first time and if they caught him interviewing disgruntled villagers again, I’m sure they were ready to ratchet up the punishment.

The 2021 Twitter story sounds very similar to the 2017 one: being followed and physically blocked by people.

> As they walked towards her house, a group of men blocked their way, pushed Sudworth and smashed and snatched the crew’s cameras.

> “As soon as we arrived in Yang Linghua’s village it was clear they were expecting us,” Sudworth wrote in his account, referring to the woman the BBC wanted to interview.

Could be the mines, or could be the Chinese government harassing a Western journalist they already had an issue with.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#230

Post by nervlord »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #177
bobwaycott wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? Assuming the best, the parent asked a bunch of questions (in an admittedly dismissive and argumentative way) to try and invite some kind of response that explains what China gets out of it, and what the world does next if we could somehow prove China created the original virus. So … let’s assume China created it. Now what? What’s the next step and response if it was an accident ? What’s the next step and res…

Few people are really answering the question, and I can only assume because everyone knows that the answer is "nothing". Western thought doesn't really work well when it's dealing with a non-Western entity that can defend itself. So while people are up in arms about the lab-leak hypothesis, they can't think past just being upset at China. We can't press China militarily without the Western way of life being threatene…

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